Adding or removing values on forms to managed picklists | Community
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C
csutherland
Level 2
July 22, 2026
Question

Adding or removing values on forms to managed picklists

  • July 22, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 18 views

We were hoping to utilise Marketo’s new picklist functionality so we can better control our data however we have identified some issues using picklist fields on forms. 


When editing forms users can still add or remove values from a field (with a managed picklist) however when the form is approved those additions or omissions are removed and all values that exist in the picklist are displayed to people viewing the form. Any changes to the values in the form obviously get removed when the form is saved. 

 

This seems a little counterintuitive to me because the form editor is allowed to make changes, but those changes are effectively ignored if they don't exist (or aren't complete) in the managed picklist. For example we have set a picklist on a field for persona, if we have a lead capture form in use at an event we may want to remove some of the persona options based on the event audience, with the current functionality we cannot do this.

 

While the point of the picklist is to protect your data, as a large business we do have a number of genuine use cases where not having the flexibility to add or remove options means we can't adopt this functionality. The only work around I have found is to put all possible values into the picklist in admin and then use visibility rules on the form to show what I want.

 

Has anyone else run into this issue? is it a problem for you too? should Adobe consider tweaks to this functionality?

      1 reply

      SanfordWhiteman
      SanfordWhiteman
      Level 10
      July 22, 2026

      The feature as implemented isn’t 100% intuitive to me, either!

       

      Bear in mind there’s no such thing as a managed or restricted picklist datatype; “managed picklist” is just a filtered view of the field in certain contexts.

       

      The fact you can add items to the picklist in Field Management and not have them propagate to the form is kinda weird. Add the fact you can’t remove an item in Form Editor and it gets extra weird.

       

      The good news is you can still customize the options using JS, which we’re used to doing to centralize picklists. This demo shows only adding new options but you can remove as well, and Marketo will happily update the field. 

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